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Tuesday, February 22, 2011

This is How Much I Love Being Right

Saturday night I got home from work feeling perfectly healthy. I watched TV on the couch for a couple of hours. Then I turned the TV off and realized a pulsing, writhing monster had taken up residence inside me.

I knew this feeling: I was aching all over, and I felt like my eyeballs had just been microwaved. I knew I had a fever. Nonetheless, I consulted our thermometer, just to be sure.

And that's when our thermometer slapped me in the face.

This must be a technical error. I was so convinced I had a fever that I resorted to trying our other, newer thermometer, which I'd been avoiding ever since we moved because I found it packed in the same box as our toilet brush. But desperate times call for desperate measures. I asked Ari to dunk it in alcohol, and then I took my temperature.

Even lower? EVEN LOWER?! And now I was going to get toilet sickness. Obviously, the thermometers were conspiring against me.

I confided in Ari about the treachery of our household electronics. I could tell he was trying to be polite, but he was secretly siding with the thermometers.

By the time I showered and got in bed, I was having chills. A plague-monster was devouring my insides, and my thermometers didn't even care. I decided to plea with them one last time.

Before I went to sleep, I took two ibuprofen anyway, out of sheer spite.

The next morning was more of the same.

Do I have a fever yet?

No.

Now?

No.

Not even now?

NO.

Finally, Sunday night, I took my temperature one last time, and a miracle happened.

And that's when I realize how much I love being right.

The best part, though, was that my fever had earned me the privilege of being openly sick. No more moping around with my game face on. Now I could wallow under a blanket on the couch making low-pitched groaning noises that sounded like they came from The Grudge.